this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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I didn't claim they didn't want access to military grade weaponry of the time, I said that at the time military grade weaponry was nearly useless without a lot of people. Yes you could have artillery, good luck trying to unilaterally do anything with that without a crew and guard (artillery were very vulnerable without a force backing them up). Good luck with the muzzle loaders when you need to reload without other people to cover
The concept of a lone actor being able to inflict mass casualty just wasn't in the equation back then.
It wasn't necessary for it to be in the equation in the way that you think it wasn't. They could see the past; it was easy to trace the evolution of arms and armor. They could easily see that, in the 1400s, a single knight in armor was more than equal to multiple men at arms, and that the handgonne had entirely changed that equation. Seeing the past, they could easily foresee that the tools of violence would change in the future.
But hey, lets drill down here. The point of the 2nd amendment is twofold; first, the people were intended to be a check against the government, and second, they recognized the common-law right to self-defense that they had taken from English law. Remember that they'd just been through a revolution, and they were well aware that a gov't could become a tyranny (which is exactly where we are very, very rapidly heading); the idea of the people being armed with military weapons meant that it would be more difficult for a hostile gov't to subjugate the people. To that end, militarily useful weapons should have more protections against banning than sporting arms. As to self-defense, well, assault rifles happen to be the most effective tool for that job--as far as defense at home goes--along with 'high capacity' magazines in handguns for carry guns. So even taking your claims at face value, if the founders somehow didn't foresee changes in the tools of violence, they hold no water.